Recent improvements in technology in the areas of compact high performance video projection systems, image processing, digital video and liquid crystal panels have made possible many practical 3D display systems utilizing both active and passive polarizing glasses and both single and multi-viewer autostereoscopic displays.
Three dimensional display systems have moved out of the arena of being technological curiosities and are now becoming practical display systems for entertainment, commercial and scientific applications. There has now emerged the requirement for 3D media to display on these devices. Traditionally there has been just two ways to produce this 3D media (i.e., media produced that contains image information for at least two separate views of the same scene from different perspectives). These are:                1) Generation of two separate views (usually in real time) by a computer.        2) Videoing or filming with two laterally displaced cameras.        
In the case of computer-generated images for usage in Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems, simulators or video game equipment, it is not a complex process to produce two separate images with different perspectives.
The filming of movies utilizing two laterally displaced cameras to produce 3D has been well understood for many years. However, there are many problems with this approach. It is considerably more difficult to film or video in 3D than in 2D because there are limits to the permissible distance between the nearest and farthest objects in the scene (practical 3D depth of field) as well as framing problems (such as near objects being seen on only one camera) and thus highlighting the inaccuracy of the 3D image generation when re-played. Another problem is maintaining a smooth pan without causing false 3D artifacts due to latency between the images from the two cameras and so on.
Because of the complexity, high cost of production and implementation, and the fact that there are as yet still only a very small number of 3D display systems being produced for the domestic and commercial markets there has not been a large incentive for the major producers of films or videos to produce 3D media. However, if a technique was devised that would allow conventional 2D films to be re-processed into a 3D version then it would be possible to not only convert new films into 3D format for significantly less cost than filming them directly in 3D in the first place but it would also make possible the re-processing of the vast archives of 2D film and video material for re-release to both the cinema and video markets.
It would however be advantageous to be able to convert an existing 2D image so that it can be viewed as a 3D image. One way of achieving this is to convert a single 2D image to two separate left and right images by a “cut and paste” technique. In this technique, an object is “cut” from the image and laterally displaced left or right then “pasted” back onto the original image to produce the required separate images. This however results in a blank region in the area formally occupied by the object within the image.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to overcome or minimize at least one of these problems.